


Going Home

by igrab



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s03e04 Sateda, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 01:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2673332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrab/pseuds/igrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was an Earth expression that Ronon knew every Satedan would stand by - <i>go big or go home</i>. They were a big people; they kept pushing, always more and bigger and louder and deeper. They didn't hesitate to put everything on the line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Home

There was an Earth expression that Ronon knew every Satedan would stand by - _go big or go home_. They were a big people; they kept pushing, always more and bigger and louder and deeper. They didn't hesitate to put everything on the line.

Now, they were gone. Ronon hadn't been back since his capture - couldn't at first, of course, and after, he didn't want to. Regret wasn't something any Satedan would hang onto, so he stayed away, uninterested in digging up the past when he knew there was nothing to be done.

That wasn't to say that he didn't feel guilty, sometimes. Sometimes, it was all he could feel.

He woke up in the infirmary with more bandage than skin and thought, _nice_. It felt good, knowing he'd given everything, held nothing back. Felt good, too, knowing he had the best in two galaxies to rely on.

So no, he didn't regret going home and he didn't regret anything that happened. But now that he had, he found it impossible to stuff the memories back behind the walls he'd built, running. For once he was glad of the weeks of recuperation ahead of him, because it gave him time. Time to remember. Time to fall apart.

Melena wasn't the love of his life, but he loved her. He loved her more when she stood up to him, when she said _I can't_ , even though it made him furious. It was a good fury. He had respected her for making choices, even though he thought they were stupid.

Tyre hadn't been the love of his life either. Satedans didn't have that, because - _go big or go home_. There was so much of them, and they had so much love to give. Monogamy was stupid. Limits were stupid. So Ronon had Melena and Tyre and sometimes Ara, and they each had their own lovers, a myriad interplay of connections that most offworlders found at best, troubling; at worst, wrong.

But Melena, Melena was always special. Ara knew it and it didn't bother her; Tyre knew it and it did. Ronon didn't care. If he wanted to be jealous, that was his business. Ronon had always made it clear who came first.

A week into his recovery, Ronon woke from a nightmare drenched in sweat, and had to push himself out of bed and stagger to the bathroom to throw up. He'd dreamt that he was back in the hospital, somehow halfway between whole and destroyed. On one side, Melena, small mouth set in a stubborn line. On the other, John Sheppard.

Even in dreams, he understood the difference between alive and dead. It was John he'd saved. He didn't even hesitate.

Ronon rubbed his face with a towel and groaned. He'd been trying to keep a lid on it, but there was only so much denial he could live with.

Melena was dead. That sucked, but it was the truth, and it would continue being the truth no matter how long he spent grieving. Sheppard wasn't. And Ronon loved him.

 

Rodney would be the first to admit that he was a little bit in over his head.

The thing with John, whatever, fine. They pissed each other off and had nothing in common and Rodney couldn't live without him, he was precisely zero amounts of surprised to hear that John was who he'd called for, drugged to the gills on morphine. Equally so, that Teyla and Ronon had followed.

What surprised him was that Carson thought he didn't care.

 _What the FUCK_ , he railed, on the inside of his head, because despite what literally everyone on Atlantis said, he actually did have a sense of what he could and couldn't get away with saying. _Does he somehow not get the memo that these people are my friends? And more than that, way more, more than it's possible to quantify with actual numbers, these are people who would die for me, who already have, not for my brain or the good I can do for Atlantis - for me. Rodney McKay. Me._

He was stunned and honestly offended, that Carson thought so little of his heart.

Besides, if it were John - no one would question it. They've proved their devotion time and again, yadda yadda, but when it was Ronon Dex that he was standing up for, suddenly people were confused. Rodney was confused. No, wait, that wasn't the right word, not really. It made sense, logically speaking, because he cared about his team and he wasn't actually a heartless automaton.

But it was startling, how angry he was that people were confused. It was startling, how vehement his defense, how loud. And, yes, he was startled at the depths of his own worry. He was so used to thinking of Ronon as stalwart, a bastion, an immovable object and unstoppable force all in one, that the concept of him in danger made every sense Rodney had go haywire. Everything in his head screamed, _WRONG!_ , and his heart, that heart that no one seemed to be able to give him any credit for, whispered quietly in the dark. _He's hurting, and you can't stand to see him hurt_.

So, yeah. That was new, or maybe it wasn't. All he knew was that he felt like something had gripped his chest in bands of steel and was squeezing, squeezing, tighter and tighter and tighter, and all Rodney could do was hang on.

 

Teyla was surprised that Ronon wanted to stay and fight on Sateda, though perhaps she should not have been. What did not surprise her, though, was that John let him. 

Seeing Ronon's homeworld, even damaged and empty, gave her new insight into the enigma of Ronon Dex. She saw, then, that Sateda was not like the other worlds of this galaxy - even the Genii, who were the closest in terms of technological advancement. No, Sateda had been something truly unique, truly special.

Teyla could only wonder how they had survived so long.

"Treachery, mostly," Ronon said when she asked, and shrugged one shoulder like it didn't bother him. "Go big or go home."

It was a good phrase to describe his people, she thought. Another, from John's explanation of an Earth card game - _All in_. Once, she had thought Ronon reckless. Now, she understood. He knew the risks. He was not unaware of the dangers, or unwilling to consider them. He simply believed that it was worth it.

Before Atlantis, when Teyla had thought about love, she thought of someone to make a home with, to have children, to support one another. It had been a simple vision.

Now, when she thought of love, she thought in terms of what she could and could not live without.

Her people had long stopped being her primary concern. One of them, to be sure, but she no longer put the welfare of the Athosians above the soldiers of Atlantis; she no longer saw them as separate entities. Her first priority, she was certain, was the safety of the planet, the galaxy, the universe. It had to be.

Only, when she thought of love, she worried that she would let entire civilizations fall to the Wraith if it meant keeping her team safe.

She had had friends, on Athos. They rarely saw her now, and when they did, they spoke only of local problems, for that was all they saw. Awareness lingered behind their eyes, though, and she knew what it was they'd seen. She had moved on.

Her family, now, was a team of four - sometimes more, and she treasured the company of Elizabeth and Carson and the others who sometimes joined them, but they were outliers, addendums, they were not part of the circuit that came alive between them, these three men that made her think of love, and herself.

She could see the shape of the connections between each of them, unique and beautiful, and until now it had been enough, to see them, to know they were there. To know that Ronon had sold the largest part of his soul to John; that John found it difficult to express himself, and more difficult still to understand the depth of his own heart; that Rodney had been alone for so long, so very long, and he did not quite know how to deal with people that liked him. She knew that there were many on Atlantis who believed that John and Rodney were sleeping together. Many others, John and herself. She knew that Ronon wanted John however he could get him, Rodney would not turn down a partner, John did not know what he wanted, and as for herself - 

It is not that she would not turn them down, but rather, that she would gladly go with any one of them.

Until now, this stasis had been acceptable.

But something had changed. Something indelible, something none of them could go back from. The look in John's eyes, desperately yearning, as she sat across from him on the Daedalus and listened to the words he'd meant to say - _I love him. I love all of you. I can't live without him, you, Rodney, you're more than friends to me and I'm terrified that you don't know_. Rodney's face, when Ronon hugged him, when he told them all in a rough and heartfelt voice that he was grateful. Ronon, staring up at John, lost. Ronon, a knife held to his throat, begging with his eyes to take this chance to be safe. Ronon, holding nothing back.

Ronon was a wild thing, and once, Teyla had thought it was from years of running. But Sateda had left its mark on her, too, for she knew now that the wildness was rooted deep in his soul.

On the way back to the Daedalus, Rodney kept glancing back, until John snapped at him to move over and let him fly. Rodney did not even take offense - he gave it over gracefully, then rushed back, crouched by Ronon's still form and watched his chest move very slightly up and down.

"He'll be all right, Rodney," Carson muttered, voice full of kindness and something else - something like surprise. 

"I know that," he snapped back, but the look on his face said otherwise. 

Teyla caught Carson's eye and shook her head, slowly side to side. 

"Right. Well." And when Rodney still said nothing, still looked stricken, Carson made for the front of the jumper, to sit with John instead.

Teyla crouched down beside Rodney, put a hand on his shoulder, and said nothing.

"I don't," Rodney said, and his voice cracked a little. He swallowed quickly, glancing around, as if he was trying to make sure he wasn't overheard. Teyla shifted just enough to block a little more of the hallway with her body.

"...Carson didn't think I cared," he muttered, quick and shaky. "When I wanted to - he didn't think. He thought I'd just."

He was as bad as John, Teyla thought, and didn't smile, though she wanted to. She let the warmth that it brought her touch her face, though. She let Rodney see what she felt.

"We know you better than that," she murmured, and squeezed his shoulder. "I would have assumed you to be truly incapacitated, if you were not here for this."

Rodney let out a soft, shuddering breath, and Teyla was startled - but not entirely surprised - to see that his eyes were wet, at the corners. "I just don't want him to - I don't. Want any of you, to think, that I don't care," and Teyla felt her heart break.

"No, Rodney," she said, firm and warm as she could. "We do not think that. You are one of the most caring people I know, and I would not trade you, or any part of you, for anyone else. You are more than our teammate, Rodney. More, even, than simply our friend."

He shuddered, and she reached out, let her hand slide along the broad expanse of his shoulders, until she could pull him close and rest her forehead against his temple. His chest was hitching, shuddering, and she realized that he was crying - silent, and dry, but crying nonetheless. All because she had said out loud what she had assumed he already knew.

"Rodney," she murmured, full of sympathy and tenderness. "Rodney, Rodney, Rodney."

 

The only reason John hadn't parked himself at Ronon's bedside and refused to leave, was because of how it might've looked.

It was the same reason he didn't do it for Rodney, either, but in this case he also didn't want to put up with him whining about how his ass hurt. 

Still, both reasons came from the same place - denial.

It wasn't that he didn't _know_ he wasn't as straight as he was supposed to be. The whole thing with Nancy - that had brought it into sharp relief. But he had always managed to convince himself that if he liked women, he'd better stick to that part of it, because the rest was nothing but trouble.

And he'd been doing fine, really, until Ronon Dex.

Rodney was one thing. John was pretty stupid for him, that didn't take rocket science to figure out. He'd had time to deal with it, to prepare. 

John had not been prepared for Ronon.

First of all, he was _hot_ , hot in ways that John had forgotten existed - undeniable, impossible to ignore. He was used to putting aside attraction to pretty girls and handsome guys, but Ronon blew through that scale with a fist cocked in anger and punched right through to John's gut. John was damn glad that pain didn't do it for him, because usually, Ronon was at his most attractive right when he was beating the shit out of him, or they were getting shot at, and John could just quietly thank the boner gods that his dick listened to the pain first, and shut down.

Second, Ronon was real.

He didn't bullshit. He didn't mince words. He said what he meant and meant what he said, and he took things at face value. He didn't read into things, didn't make deductions, he just straight up listened.

John didn't really know why that made him want to kiss him on the mouth, but it did. He did.

Ronon was out. Rodney was out. John wanted to punch things, because what he _really_ wanted to do was go down there and push their beds together and crawl in between them so he could touch them both as much as possible, like that would somehow keep them from getting hurt.

Teyla found him in the gym, whaling away at the punching bag. She rapped him on the shoulder with one of her sticks - wordlessly offered a pair, when he turned, and he took them with a look of naked adoration.

They settled into a rhythm, neither of them really pushing to best the other, just moving, moving, moving.

Suddenly, Teyla knocked him to the ground, climbed up on his chest, braced his shoulders down with her knees and held her crossed sticks at his throat. "I do not think this is what you really want to be doing," she said, and John figured out right then and there that he loved her, too.

"I can't," he rasped, because she actually was putting pressure on his jugular, and also he was talking about feelings. It was easier, though, on his back and out of breath with his muscles screaming and heart rate through the roof. Which, probably, was Teyla's intent all along. "Everyone's gonna know. They'll see it, they'll jump to conclusions, that's - I can't do it. I can't do it when I know what it looks like."

Teyla's face was a mask of stubborn, righteous anger and he knew he'd said the wrong thing, but that, unfortunately, was the truth.

When she spoke, it was with careful, controlled words, and he knew how much it was costing her to choose them wisely.

"I do not think," she said, her chest streaked with sweat and heaving with the force of her breaths, "that anyone on this planet. Would come to any conclusions they had not already come to. If you were to stay with them." 

_Them_ , she said, John noted distantly. _She knows. She knows._

"And it is my belief," and once again she was measured, restrained, every word deliberate and forceful, "that you are only hurting yourself, Ronon, Rodney, and me, with your reluctance to express yourself."

He wanted to protest, to shout at her, _I'm not trying to be reluctant, I'm trying to have a sense of self-preservation!_ but really, since when did he have one of those?

 _Since you started caring about other people,_ his mind supplied, all too helpfully. _Since you found someone - three someones - worth living for._

"Okay," he said, his heart beating wildly in his chest. "Okay. Okay. I'll go."

 

Ronon woke up to someone holding his hand.

For a second - just a split second - he thought he was back on Sateda, he thought that it was Tyre, gripping his hand like he'd die without him, he thought it would be seconds before Melena bustled in, griping about his injuries.

But no. That was not his life anymore.

He opened his eyes, and saw that John Sheppard was watching him.

"Hey," John muttered, and he looked so lost that Ronon had to crack a grin.

"Hey," he murmured back.

"Oh, _he_ gets to hold your hand," a familiar voice called out from the next bed over, and Ronon's grip tightened when he saw John's eyes go wide, saw him about to pull away.

Rodney huffed and bunched up one of his pillows, stuffing it under his chin to prop his head up. Ronon thought about asking, which one of them he'd been referring to, but with a sudden burst of clarity he realized it didn't matter. It could have been either of them or both, it was Rodney's way of saying, _don't leave me behind_.

He should know by now that they don't do that here.

"You're too far away," he said instead, like that should be obvious, and Rodney huffed a breath in response.

"Like that's my fault."

"You could always move the bed."

"Oh, and risk Beckett flipping out on me again? Nice try, caveman."

Rodney looked, all of a sudden, like he'd said something wrong. Ronon frowned. "What."

"Nothing," he replied, too quickly, and John was the one to respond, with a snort and a roll of his eyes.

"Yeah, sure," he drawled. "Try again, McKay."

Rodney sighed, heavily, buried his face in the pillow and groaned. "I hate you both," was what he said, but all Ronon heard was, _I'm yours_.

"Am I exempt from this hatred?" Teyla's voice came from the doorway, and they all looked up to see her there, dressed for time off in a shirt that showed skin. Not for the first time, Ronon wondered what she'd be like, as a lover - gentle, fierce, or some intoxicating combination of both. 

"Depends," Rodney muttered, face still mashed into the pillow. 

Teyla came over, pulled up a chair next to John, but still close enough that she could reach out and tough Rodney's thigh. "I admit that I am as curious as they are about your behavior," she said, with that smile on her face, the one that meant she knew exactly what she was doing, and it entertained her.

Ronon was more than a little in love with that smile.

"Then yes," Rodney snapped, but he sighed, lifting his head and propping it up once again. "Does it bother you?"

Not one of them needed to ask who he was talking to, despite his head facing the wall.

"Does what bother me," Ronon said, voice rolled in gravel. John was still holding his hand, he noted, and it felt easy, comfortable in a way that not many things were. 

"The nickname."

"What - " Oh. That nickname. "Why would it?"

John was giving him one of his calculating looks, the one he wore when making tactical decisions or playing golf. "Do you even know what it means?"

Ronon shrugged. "Don't need to." He didn't in so many words, but he'd pretty much gotten the connotation. "Figure, if it's one of you, it's all right."

And that, he saw, was when it started to dawn in all their faces. That they had something, and yeah, they didn't need to talk about it but maybe they did. Maybe it hurt more, to leave some things unsaid.

"On Sateda," Ronon started, then stopped, realizing with a drop in his stomach that he could have said 'home', and didn't. Because home was no longer a sprawling mess of cities and a brash, bold people who gave everything they had. That place was gone, now, and going back had only sealed the deal - that planet, those piles of rubble and empty rooms, empty streets, nothing left but skeletons and guns - that was not a place anyone would call home, let alone Ronon.

No, his home was a city on a vast and open sea, it was a handsome daredevil who'd taught Ronon how to trust again, it was a passionate leader who had been through the worst and come out better, it was a brilliant scientist, someone who should never be allowed on the front lines, someone more terrified than anyone Ronon had ever known, but throwing himself into the fire regardless. 

On Sateda, what Ronon used to call home, they had a saying. _A warrior can be fearless or brave, but not both._ More than anyone, Rodney McKay was brave.

They were all looking at him. He wondered, briefly, what it was they saw. 

"On Sateda," he started over again. "We don't do marriage. Not like other places." _Didn't,_ he thought, but that wasn't true, that wasn't what he was trying to say - Sateda wasn't home anymore, but Ronon was still Satedan.

"Is that why you said 'something like that'?" John asked, and Ronon should've known that would be back to bite him in the ass.

"Yeah," he ground out. "Sort of. I mean, we have the same sort of thing, but. There's stuff that's different."

He didn't, he'd never had to explain this, he didn't have the words.

"What kind of stuff?" Teyla asked, with so much gentleness that he wanted to shout - but John's hand was still in his, keeping him steady. He wanted to bottle up how that felt, that balance, that dichotomy, and make it into something they could understand.

"There was this girl," he said instead. "And we were - we lived together. Sometimes."

They all just waited for him to continue.

"... Sometimes," and he was having trouble looking at them, suddenly worried that they just wouldn't get it and everything would fall apart, "when I was out on campaign, I lived with a guy. One guy. There was a girl - different girl - she'd be with us sometimes, sometimes she was somewhere else. With other people. I wanted the guy to like the girl. First girl. Didn't click for him. She had someone, different people, some of them stayed sometimes and some of them didn't do it for me." He ran up short, didn't know what else to say, how else to put it. He still didn't want to look.

"You are saying," and it was Teyla, of course, because of all of them, Teyla was the one who knew how to speak, how to make sense of this chaos. "That on Sateda, there was no expectation of... fidelity."

"No," he cut in, and his head snapped around, eyes narrowed. "No. Not like that. It's..." He growled, frustrated, and his hand squeezed John's a little too tight, he could feel the bones creaking, but John didn't say a word.

"...You don't just have one," he said, hearing desperation in his own voice. He didn't know how to say it, but he had to try. "That's not - there's too much. How can there just be one? _Look_ ," and he yanked their joined hands up, made them all see, made it impossible to politely not notice. "This. This keeps me steady. Rodney," and he saw the other man startle out of the corner of his eye, like he was shocked at being referred to, "makes me. I protect him. He's precious. He can be that, for me, when that's what I need, when he needs me. Teyla," and he felt it - his throat tightened, John's fingers twitched, and meeting Teyla's eyes sent a shock of something almost unbearably intimate through him.

Only almost, because John was still holding his hand.

"Teyla says the things we're all too stupid to say," he muttered, still looking her dead on. "She's reason. Kindness. Good things. We need that," and his voice, his voice was sounding scraped and raw, but only because he'd never been this candid, never. It felt like he was cutting himself open and exposing all the soft, frail organs. "And it hurts. When she does that. Because real things hurt sometimes. But _this_ ," and he shook John's hand, "gives me the strength to bear it. We need each other. All of us."

He sounded hoarse, he felt eviscerated, he felt alive.

"That doesn't mean I'd be okay with it. If any of you found someone else." He thought about this for a second, then added, "for more than sex. Sex doesn't matter," and he heard Rodney make a small huff of disbelief, but plowed right on. "I mean. It doesn't have to matter. Sometimes sex is just sex. But when it's not, that's because there's something. Something there. Something that. Makes you feel complete. Alive." He swallowed. "On Sateda, we understood, that one person can't be everything."

Silence followed, as he knew it would. He looked, now. Felt brave, rather than fearless, but he could do this. He was going to. He owed them that much.

Rodney had his thinking face on, like this was just another impossible problem that only he could solve. Ronon's lip quirked. Teyla, the look on her face was one of serenity and understanding, and it calmed him, knowing that she, at least, had heard him. John - 

John looked terrified.

Ronon had never seen him look scared in all their time together, and that was a shock, an unpleasant one. Well, now he knew that if John was ever in enough danger to be actually, legitimately scared, Ronon would go to hell and back for him, as many times as it took, because John Sheppard should never, _ever_ be scared.

"What," he ground out, because he couldn't - he couldn't take it. He was brave but not that brave, not bedridden with his heart splayed out between these people that he loved more than life itself.

John didn't seem to hear him. He was staring, but he wasn't seeing, and Ronon felt a surge of worry, intense and pointed - 

"So basically," Rodney said all of a sudden, cutting through the rise, "you're saying we should have a foursome."

It worked. Which, he supposed, further underlined his point - that they four, all of them, were meant for this, for each other, for everything. John sputtered.

"Really, Rodney? You pick _now_ of all times to be asinine?"

Ronon met Teyla's eyes over John's profile, where he and Rodney were glaring at each other. The look on her face said, _I know what he did, and it is exactly what you meant._

"Anyway," Rodney barreled on, "Ronon's right. We really should stop kidding ourselves, it's not like anyone's actually going to object."

Teyla looked at John, then, exchanged a silent communication that Ronon hadn't been privy to. "We would only be hurting ourselves, and each other, if we continue with our reluctance to express ourselves."

Ronon smirked. "Go big or go home."

John blew out a breath, then, and he still looked only grudgingly accepting, but at least the fear was gone. "Fine," he muttered. "You win. Alpha team foursome it is."

 

But really, Ronon thought - later, much later - that expression wasn't right, either. Going big, yes. Always. No question.

But there was no reason he couldn't have both. Go big _and_ go home. Going big, everywhere, no matter what, even when - and maybe, especially when - you're finally, finally going home.


End file.
